5 Stories You May Have Missed This Week

5 Stories You May Have Missed This Week

Posted by Tracy Fehr on May 12, 2012

Here at Enough, we often swap emails with interesting articles and feature stories that we come across in our favorite publications and on our favorite websites. We wanted to share some of these stories with you as part of our effort to keep you up to date on what you need to know in the world of anti-genocide and crimes against humanity work.

Writing for the right-leaning blog Ricochet, Elizabeth Blackney brings a conservative viewpoint in favor of the Dodd Frank Resolution 1502. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers are “locked in a mutually beneficial foot-dragging scheme,” she writes. “However, American consumers should not be forced to purchase blood hybrids or conflict mineral laden electronics when we know there is a better, safer way.”

Thousands have been displaced in eastern Congo due to fighting between ex-CNDP mutineers and government forces. This week, the Huffington Post featured a slideshow, “Clashes in Congo,” that includes powerful photographs taken by photographers Phil Moore and Junior D. Kannah of IDPs in the region and FARDC soldiers. A Reuters report ran with the slideshow, providing personal accounts from the events on the ground.

In a guest blog dispatch from Sierra Leone and Liberia, Dr. Gerhard Anders describes sentiments from the ground in response to the International Criminal Court’s guilty verdict for former President of Liberia Charles Taylor.

In the streets of Freetown, most people greeted the news of the judgement with an indifferent shrug whilst critical voices where heard in parts of neighbouring Liberia. In contrast to the self-congratulatory praise by humanitarian activists and Western governments, people in Sierra Leone and Liberia hold much more differentiated views on the trial against Charles Taylor.

This week’s CNN “African Voices” featured Nairobi radio talk show personality Caroline Mutuko, who believes that African women “are the backbone of our nations and their success will lead to the success of Africa.” Mutoko authored an op-ed, using her own mother as a frame of reference, to tell African leaders five essential things that African women need to succeed.

As South Sudan’s oil shutdown has put a temporary hold on the new nation’s main source of revenue, the government has begun borrowing loans to keep the economy afloat. Bloomberg reports on South Sudan’s recent inflation rate jump, and the role loans and oil may play in the state’s future economy.